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Blight fight
Boardman resident wages one-man war on abandoned homes and nuisance properties
By Ashley Luthern
BOARDMAN
A two-story residence at 269 Erskine Ave. on Boardman’s north side is one of 151 vacant township homes.
Overgrown shrubs conceal the front porch and a chunk of wood is missing from the garage door.
“My father-in-law says you can’t buy the whole street,” said Ken Neese of Erskine Avenue with a smile. Neese, a 12-year resident of the street, had purchased another vacant Erskine property and demolished it in February.
But Neese isn’t sure he can afford to purchase the 269 Erskine property. Many of the 151 vacant homes in Boardman are on the township’s latest list of 263 nuisance properties.
Neese worries about the vacant property — that it will attract prowlers and increase crime on the street. It’s a concern shared by many township residents.
“People do call,” said Jason Loree, township administrator. “... We get the neighbors who come up and say, ‘Well, they just left the house.’ We’re seeing a lot of it throughout the county: foreclosures, people just walking away.”
A nuisance
The township hit a peak of 318 nuisance properties in 2008 from a low of 108 in 2004, zoning department statistics show. The township’s cost in 2009 for addressing nuisance properties was more than $27,000.
Properties can be cited by the township as a nuisance if there’s high grass (10 inches or taller), junk, debris, garbage or anything that is “unsightly,” said Zoning Inspector Anna Mamone.
With foreclosure, it can be hard to determine who the new property owner is and therefore who to cite, Mamone said.
“It’s sad to hear all these stories [of foreclosure], but the problem that we have is that there are people who are moving out, and the banks are not coming forth and saying ‘We’re in charge of the house,’” she said.
The inspector added it can take up to two years for the owner information to change at the county auditor’s website.
“We get lucky sometimes,” Mamone said. “...If we get hold of the bank and get that right person and try to be consistent and make a lot of phone calls. We’ll spend a lot of time to try to get them to work with us.”
When the zoning office gets a complaint, a field inspector will go to the property, usually the next day, to determine if there is a violation. If confirmed, the zoning inspector will send a letter, which serves as a citation, with a deadline for cleanup. Deadlines vary depending on the cause of citation. For example, garbage removal usually gets a week deadline, whereas painting a home could get 40 days.
If a property stays on the nuisance list, which is updated every two weeks and presented at trustee meetings, another letter will be sent after the third time it appears on the list, Mamone said.
The second letter demands action within seven days, and during that time the township accepts bids from contractors for the properties.
Combating crime
Vacant homes provide opportunity for criminals, said police Chief Jack Nichols.
“The big problem we’ve had is people would break into homes and cut the copper and sell the copper to price dealers,” Nichols said, who added the break-ins have decreased. “The price of copper has gone back down, and in addition to that, we made several arrests.”
Nichols urged neighbors to be alert.
“If they see a strange vehicle or parked car or people prowling ... someone carrying tools and going in and out, they should call us,” he said.
A man working for the a contractor hired by the zoning office to clean a Charles Avenue property was allegedly assaulted July 28.
Violet Huseman, 64, of Warren was arrested that evening for punching the man, who is also employed as a Boardman firefighter, and intentionally hitting him with her car.
According to police, Huseman screamed at the man, who was trimming shrubs, to get off her deceased mother’s property, and punched him in the lip. Police say she then got into her car and accelerated forward, pinning the man’s legs under her front bumper and snapping off her front license-plate plastic cover. Huseman faces a charge of felonious assault.
Mamone said the firefighter was working for a private cleanup company, which met the township’s guidelines for bidding on the properties. The firefighter, Christopher Pater, does not own the company.
Banding together
For Neese, moving is not an option. He and his wife Kelly have lived on the street for 12 years; Kelly Neese grew up there and her parents still live on Erskine. Neese is in the process of fixing up another property on the street for his parents.
Neese called Boardman Township after he went to look at 269 Erskine, when he was still considering buying it. He found stacked garbage inside, dirty dishes and debris everywhere.
Mamone then notified the Mahoning County Board of Health after receiving the complaint.
Director of Environmental Health Mary Helen Smith said 269 Erskine was inspected.
“It was about trash inside the house, and that’s not really a public nuisance,” Smith said. “The house is locked, the windows were secured, no signs of rats or odors, so we closed the complaint because it wasn’t a violation of the housing code.”
Even though the mess remains, Neese said neighborhoods should bring concerns to authorities and band together to combat blight created by nuisance properties.
“I wanted to keep the neighborhood safe,” he said. “I took into consideration neighborhood safety, the cost of purchase and the depreciation of adjoining properties.”
In January, he bought 319 Erskine and leveled it to the ground, rather than spending at least $60,000 to rehabilitate the house.
In the spring, Neese plans to start a children’s community garden at the site.
“It’s nice to have a slogan, ‘Boardman: A Nice Place to Call Home.’ But it doesn’t mean anything unless people group together,” said Neese — suggesting the slogan be changed to “Together, making Boardman a nice place to call home.”